


Aunt Mae's Diner, 3AM

by prodigalDaughter



Category: Jem and the Holograms (Cartoon), Jem and the Holograms - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Gen, mentions of stormer and kimber, music is magic fanzine, separately though, there's hints of jemzazz but not enough to tag for I think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19320847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalDaughter/pseuds/prodigalDaughter
Summary: It’s amazing how few things need to go wrong to trap a person across from her rival in a strange state at three in the morning.First of my two fics for the charity zineMusic is Magic.





	Aunt Mae's Diner, 3AM

It’s amazing how few things need to go wrong to trap a person across from her rival in a strange state at three in the morning.

  
First of all, the tour bus broke down and Rio didn’t have the part to fix it. He kicked the tire in frustration, which woke Jerrica up. She felt gross and messy from sleeping in a bus, so she asked Synergy for the Jem hologram in pajamas that were cute and flattering instead of her real ones, which were comfy and wrinkled. He explained they’d need to find a phone, and she ran in to get her coat. After some thought, she decided to stay Jem, mostly because she’d told him Jerrica was still asleep. That all together probably counted as the second thing to go wrong.

Rio and Jem left a note for the slumbering Holograms and trudged along the side of the road. Jerrica was quietly pleased she had her comfy slippers on under the hologram, and didn’t actually feel the heeled mules with pink fur at the vamp Synergy had projected for her. They walked in silence, Jem’s hands in the pockets of her trench coat, shoulders drawn up against the cold. Rio was obviously in a bad mood, and she didn’t want to make it worse.

The night was quiet; no crickets, no cars in the distance, hardly any wind. The stars pierced the heavens, so much brighter here than they ever looked in LA. Jem wondered where they were. The last stop had been Salt Lake, and they were heading for Nashville, so… Colorado? Kansas? They’d been driving a day and half a night. It was almost an hour of quiet musing before they found a town, and longer than that before they found a pay phone.

Rio said he’d be a while, calling roadside assistance, so Jem slipped off into an all-night diner to get out of his way. The warm, orangey light inside was appealing, and she’d woken up with a fierce hunger. It was a mistake.

She’d barely sat down and asked for a coffee and some banana pancakes when she heard the furious yelp from the other end of the diner and saw Pizzazz storming towards her.

“What are you doing here?!” Pizzazz hissed at her, voice sharp and nasal.

“Getting something to eat,” Jem said, already so much more tired at the thought of dealing with Pizzazz. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“Coffee,” Pizzazz grumbled, flopping into the other side of the booth. “Touring rips up my sleep schedule. Not like you’d know about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You never tour.”

“We’re touring right now!”

“Not never-never,” Pizzazz said, waving a hand dismissively. “But you were never— _a touring band_. You and your prissy pretty princesses come out of nowhere and cheat your way to a contest win—“

“We didn’t cheat!”

“—yeah you did. But the point is you were famous like _that_. You show up and suddenly you’re the second-biggest band on the West coast. You’re doing charity events, you’re filming a freakin’ movie, it just _happened_ , for you. That’s not how it works for the rest of us, little miss perfect.”

“As though it didn’t go that way for you? I’d never heard of the Misfits before Eric Raymond called you into his office that day.”

“Because you don’t pay attention. I’ve been running around with those girls for years. We played bars, we played clubs, hell, we played my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah— boy, were her parents mad. But you gotta do things, Jem, you gotta pile into the back of a tiny van and yell at each other about your amps taking up too much space and _play_. I swear you and your Holograms never worked for anything.”

“That’s not true,” Jem exclaimed, “we’ve worked hard all our lives, running Starlight House! Father— Jerrica’s father was a smart and determined man who did his best to provide for his daughters and all the foster girls in his Home. We’re trying to do the same, each how we can. I can sing, so I’ll sing for them.”

Pizzazz was looking at her skeptically, at first, but then a realization dawned on her face. A jolt of terror went through Jem, at the thought Pizzazz had figured her out.

“You’re a foster kid, huh,” she said.

Jem let out a breath.

“Something like that,” she admitted. Another little lie, another part of being Jem, another layer of the deception.

Pizzazz leaned back in her seat, apparently thinking about it, as the waitress brought Jem her coffee and pancakes— and fetched Pizzazz her coffee from the other table, too. She didn’t say thank you, so Jem did it for her.

“Whatever,” Pizzazz said, and had a sip. “I was almost done anyway.”

“You’re the one who always sings about living easy,” Jem said. “Why are you getting on my case about working hard when you’re the poster girl for rich laziness?”

“It’s aspirational, dipstick. Lyrics aren’t the gospel truth anyway; you should know that. Unless you’re actually constantly paranoid that your boyfriend is interested in someone else, guilty about deceiving him, know some magician or something who can make things look different, and a time traveler.”

Jem huffed and crossed her arms. “All I’m saying is that you make a certain impression.”

Pizzazz let out a little chuckle and whistled a line of _She Makes An Impression._

“So you do listen to my music.”

“Gag me right out the door.”

At three in the morning, makeup-less and hair un-teased, Pizzazz looked more like a person and less like a banshee. Her eyes were very green— Jem wondered if that was why she’d chosen that colour to dye her hair. Her lips were a little narrow, her nose a little sharp. Jem thought about the features she’d given herself with the hologram, rounded, apple cheeked, doll like, and wondered why she’d chosen that particular standard of beauty. She hadn’t had much time to think about it. It had seemed obvious at the time, but in front of Pizzazz she suddenly felt stamped out of plastic, in front of a real woman.

“Hey,” Pizzazz said. “You’re looking at me like Stormer looks at Geena Davis. Snap out of it.”

Jem shook herself.

“Why Geena Davis?”

“Don’t ask me to explain her taste,” Pizzazz said, then bit her tongue and grimaced. “And if you say anything—“

“I won’t,” Jem said, “I won’t. I’m more surprised you know about that kind of thing.”

“Have done since she shoved a copy of _Annie On My Mind_ at me and insisted I ‘tell her what I think’. Thought she was coming on to me but she wasjust coming out.”

“Right,” Jem said, and had a sip of her coffee. She thought about Rio, outside in the phone booth. She thought about whatever it was she’d seen Kimber hiding under her bed, back in Starlight Mansion. She thought about herself.

Then Rio came back in and ordered an omelet, and Pizzazz left, and the moment was over.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out https://jemfanzine.tumblr.com/ to see more about what we did! There's still two days left to get your hands on the zine, as of this posting. (The window closes June 24, 2019)


End file.
